page_title: Breastfeeding in public
section_title: Africa
hierarchical_section_title: Breastfeeding in public / Attitudes by country and continent / Africa
caption_attribution_description: Photo taken in 1967 or 1968. The mother was one of the children of my next-door neighbors in Kabala. As is customary there, she had come home to stay with her parents for an extended period during her pregnancy and while her child was still an infant. She asked me to take a few pictures of her child and get prints for her next time I was in Freetown (which I did).
context_page_description: The social attitude and legal status regarding the practice of breastfeeding in public vary widely in cultures around the world. In many countries, both in the Global South and in a number of Western countries, breastfeeding babies in open view of the general public is common and generally not regarded as an issue. In many parts of the world including Australia, some parts of the United States and Europe, along with some countries in Asia, women have an explicit legal right to nurse in public and in the workplace.
  Even though the practice may be legal or socially accepted, some mothers may nevertheless be reluctant to expose a breast in public to breastfeed due to actual or potential objections by other people, negative comments, or harassment. It is estimated that around 63% of mothers across the world have publicly breast-fed. The media have reported a number of incidents in which workers or members of the public have objected to or forbidden women breastfeeding. Some mothers avoid the negative attention and choose to move to another location. But some mothers have protested their treatment, and have taken legal action or engaged in protests.
context_section_description: In many areas of Africa breastfeeding in public is the norm. Babies are commonly carried on a mother's back in a length of cloth and merely moved to the front for feeding.  The nursing mother may shield the view of the baby nursing, but generally no attempt is made to hide the baby and the mother's breast from view.  When a baby is seen crying in public it is assumed that the woman with the infant is not the child's mother, since it is normally thought that she would feed the infant if she were the mother.
caption: A new mother in Kabala, Sierra Leone in West Africa nurses outdoors.
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